Pigtails and Inkwells
by icepixel
Summary: A collection of unrelated ficlets in which Jack Thompson is terrible at flirting and Peggy Carter is various combinations of irritated, amused, confused, and intrigued.
1. Pigtails and Inkwells

"'Night, Marge," Agent Thompson said as he sidled behind Peggy's desk to pull his coat and hat off the rack on the wall. They were the only two left in the SSR bullpen at this late hour.

Peggy shifted in her chair so she could regard him coolly. "You know, I really hate that name."

He smirked. "Why do you think I use it?"

Her forehead creased and her eyes narrowed in a glare that should've sent him up in flames. Instead, he continued to smirk at her, so smugly arrogant she could scream.

"You were one of those horrid little boys who pulled girls' pigtails at school, weren't you?"

"Agent Carter," he said, suddenly all offended innocence, "I'm insulted. I never pulled a girl's pigtail." He paused to wag a finger at her. "I always dipped it in the inkwell."

She sighed heavily and, shaking her head, returned to her paperwork while he laughed quietly at his own joke. She heard rustling behind her—probably him putting on his coat—that she pointedly ignored. Finally, she heard footsteps on the wooden floor as he started to leave.

And then she felt a distinct, deliberate, and downright painful tug on one of her curls.

"Jack!" she yelped, half-rising from her seat. "I'm going to—!" But he was already speeding toward the front of the room, and ducked through the door before she could finish her threat. Muttering various imprecations against his character, she sank back down in her chair, vowing revenge. Perhaps salt in his coffee the next time she passed by his desk. Or a leaky pen in his coat pocket—that would be satisfying.

She noticed the folded piece of paper on her desk a few moments later. Going against her better judgment—Jack had left it there, and given what might charitably be called the sense of humor he'd been demonstrating lately, she couldn't rule out the possibility that it contained a spider, and while she was hardly _afraid_ of them, that didn't mean she had to _like_ them—she picked it up and carefully unfolded it.

_Too bad we use ballpoints now._

Peggy gritted her teeth. Whether it was from frustration or to keep herself from smiling, she was not planning to explore.


	2. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

I have a few ideas for ficlets along the theme of "Jack is terrible at flirting; Peggy banters rings around him," so I thought I'd put them all together. At the moment, each ficlet/chapter stands on its own.

* * *

Peggy bit back a smile as she watched Jack play peek-a-boo with one of the young children they'd evacuated from an orphanage on the Lower East Side. Hoping for shock value, a low-level Leviathan operative had planted a new type of bomb that had the scientists all excited and which, thankfully, had failed to actually detonate. She and Jack had given the all-clear fifteen minutes ago, and were now just hanging around to make sure everyone got back inside without further incident.

Jack uncovered his face again, grinning delightedly as the baby laughed. His wide-eyed, animated expression and high-pitched chatter at the child were completely at odds with the stern or cocky demeanor he usually displayed.

When one of the staff members came to retrieve the baby, Jack waved and piped "Bye-bye!" at the little boy utterly unselfconsciously, which finally prompted Peggy to let out a quickly stifled snort of laughter.

He glanced at her with a raised eyebrow and the hint of a mocking smile. "Something funny, Carter?"

She shrugged. "I suppose I just never expected you to enjoy interacting with children."

He smiled, and this time it was genuine. "Kids are great. They remind you how...simple life can be. How much fun."

"I suppose that means you want some of your own?"

He nodded. "A few. Five, maybe six."

Peggy's eyebrows quickly rose up her forehead. "I hope the woman you have these children with knows what she's getting into."

He flicked his fingers carelessly. "What's the point if you can't field your own basketball team?"

"That's not the one where they run around on a field trying to knock each other down, is it?"

For a moment, he looked aghast, then disappointed. Then he noticed the amusement playing around the corners of her mouth. "Why do I feel like Sousa owes me money?" he asked rhetorically.

They watched an orphanage worker take the last of the children back inside the secured building. Peggy leaned against the wall of the building, the heat of the sun-warmed bricks penetrating the back of her thin jacket. Jack also leaned against the building, crossing one foot over the other and turning toward her with a curious expression.

"Should I assume you don't want any? Kids, I mean," he said.

She looked down, and the silence, just a moment too long, broke the jovial bubble they'd been operating in. "It's different for women, you know," she finally said, looking back up at him. "Especially if we want to keep a job. This job in particular." Pregnancy and chasing bad guys didn't exactly go hand in hand.

Jack studied her, his gaze far too penetrating for someone she had only just begun to see as anything but the office jackass, before he nodded slowly.

"That said, I..." She hadn't planned to say anything else. The beginning of the sentence had just slipped out.

"What?" Jack asked when she didn't continue. It wasn't perfunctory. He seemed, in fact, to be hanging on to her every word.

She smiled briefly before it fled again. "I am...curious...what it would be like. I believe one would be quite enough, though." One wouldn't put her out of commission for so very long. Maybe it might just be possible. Assuming she found someone—someone else—she'd like to have one with.

He watched her for a moment longer before pushing off from the wall. "All right, we'll compromise on two. A girl for you, a boy for me."

He hadn't...he wouldn't...what?

"'We'? I fail to recall the point at which I was brought into this baby-making enterprise of yours."

He grinned unrepentantly and started walking back toward the car they'd arrived in. "Believe me, when it happens, you'll definitely remember," he called over his shoulder.

Suffused with horror, and maybe just a dash of something that was not _entirely_ horror, she stared at his back for a while before raising her voice to say, "Is that a threat, Agent Thompson?"

"Think of it more as a promise" floated back to her over the warm afternoon air.

She stood very still, her fists clenched, entirely unsure what to do with this particular bit of cheek.

Jack opened the car door. "You coming?" he called.

She started forward. "I hope you like changing diapers," she said as she approached. He did a double take. She reached the car and opened the door, holding onto the frame as she stared across the roof at him. "Since the second one would be your idea, it seems only fair you should do most of the work."

He smirked and got into the car. She followed, pulling the door shut behind her. "Takes two to make a baby."

"Only takes one to change a diaper." She thought she saw him blanch just a bit as he started the engine. "Or give the baby a bottle, bathe it, rock it to sleep..."

"And what are you going to be up to while I'm doing all that?"

She shrugged as he pulled out into traffic. "Saving the world, of course."


	3. First Aid

"Jack Thompson, if you don't kiss me properly in the next five seconds, I believe I shall go quite mad."

For a long moment, Jack wondered if the last several minutes had all been a strange, frustrating dream that was finally taking a turn for satisfaction, but then Peggy muttered, "Do I have to do everything myself?" before she leaned forward, grabbed his collar, and kissed him.

[This time, Peggy befuddles Jack.]

* * *

"Oh, hold still," Peggy admonished she attacked the long gash on Jack's right temple with alcohol.

"Hold still? This is worse than the punch that caused it. Good thing you weren't a nurse in the war."

"I'm sure we're all grateful for that." She rolled her eyes. "Just be glad I didn't hit you harder."

They'd needed to cause a scene in a bar owned by a man they suspected of having one of Stark's weapons so that Sousa could sneak into the office. Carter had chosen to start a brawl, with Jack as the first victim.

He supposed he wasn't actually _surprised_.

After they were kicked out, she'd insisted on taking him back to the penthouse Stark had put her up in to fix up all of his injuries—at last count, the cut on his temple, some scratches on his knuckles, a bruise on his jaw where she'd socked him harder than she meant, and a muscle in his side that twinged when he moved the wrong way, not to mention the various strains and aches that would start reporting in tonight and tomorrow. He'd refused on principle, and yet he'd somehow, without quite knowing how, found himself seated in a handsome wooden dining chair in Stark's opulent, modern kitchen while Peggy cleaned him up.

"Why do I get the feeling you wouldn't have minded really socking me one if the opportunity presented itself?"

A shadow crossed her face, and she paused briefly in dabbing the alcohol-soaked cotton ball at his cut. "I don't actually enjoy hurting you."

"That right hook you gave me in the alley behind the automat says otherwise." Well, that had slipped out. Was he really still that sore about it? It had been weeks now.

"You were in my way," she said, pulling the cotton ball away and reaching for a bandage from her well-stocked first aid kit. It looked a lot like his. Some Army habits died hard, he supposed. "I was trying to protect Howard."

She placed the bandage over his wound, pressing lightly with her fingertips so the adhesive would stick to his skin. At the edges, where they touched his forehead, he felt electricity crackle, and sucked in a breath he hoped she didn't hear.

"Glad to know you think of me as a roadblock, Carter."

With a sharp huff of breath, she sat back in her own chair. "What do you want me to do, Jack? Apologize again?"

The imp of the perverse took hold of his tongue, as it so often did around her. "You could kiss it better."

Her whole face wrinkled in disgust, and he _knew_ she was about to stand up and walk away. But then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his temple.

He should _not_ have enjoyed it as much as he did. She wasn't even really touching him, for Christ's sake, just the bandage, but the mere thought of those incredibly red lips on his body was...

The Chief had been more astute than he knew, calling it a crush. Jack would never in a million years admit it out loud, but Peggy Carter was the object of more than one very satisfying fantasy. That was Peggy; always breaking in where she wasn't supposed to be and making herself at home, from the SSR to the deepest recesses of his brain.

When she drew back, he felt the loss of contact immediately. If he'd been a weaker man, he might have whined.

Her cheeks were slightly flushed, that pale English china complexion darkened by...something. Maybe she was just embarrassed. He watched her take a deep breath. "Better?"

"Much." He pointed at her chin, his finger only an inch away from her. They were still well within each other's space. "You got a bump there." The red lump, about the size of a marble, was already gaining hints of purple and blue.

"The big fellow in the bowler. He got me straight on," she admitted, a little sheepish. Jack wondered, briefly, if it might be possible to find the man who'd landed a punch on her and make sure he received one or ten in return.

Before he'd really thought about what he was doing, Jack leaned over to kiss the bruise. Peggy turned her head at the same moment, and he found himself kissing the corner of her mouth, not quite her cheek and not entirely her lips.

He froze. She froze. This...was not what he had planned.

They both remained still as stones for what felt like hours, locked in the awkward not-quite kiss, until Jack finally made himself pull away.

His face started to burn as he stared at her lips, at the tiny smudge in the lipstick at the furthest corner of her mouth, evidence that his own had pressed against it. His lips tingled at the memory of her skin. He knew he should be apologizing, but the only thing he could think was how much he wanted to kiss her for real.

Her lips parted slightly, and he managed to drag his gaze up to her eyes as she took a breath to speak.

"Jack Thompson, if you don't kiss me properly in the next five seconds, I believe I shall go quite mad."

For a long moment, Jack wondered if the last several minutes had all been a strange, frustrating dream that was finally taking a turn for satisfaction, but then Peggy muttered, "Do I have to do everything myself?" before she leaned forward, grabbed his collar, and kissed him.

And it felt way too real to be a dream. She crushed her mouth against his, taking complete control as she pulled his lower lip between her own, before he caught up to what was happening and kissed her back.

Peggy's lips were soft and sweet under that red lipstick, but like all the rest of her they masked a hard determination. She kissed like she was directing a tac team. All at the same time, she slid her fingers up his neck into his hair, fisted his collar even tighter in her hand, and insisted none too gently with her tongue until he had no choice but to let her in.

When she eventually drew back, leaving both of them panting, Jack was too stunned to say anything. His brain was too full of her lingering taste, of the light perfume still evident under the dirt and sweat of the bar fight, of the remembered feeling of her fingers in the short hair at the nape of his neck. He noticed that she hadn't removed her other hand from his shirt.

She noticed too, apparently, and slowly uncurled her fist. He saw her swallow and glance at her lap for an instant before looking back at him. "I hope I haven't just made a terrible mistake."

"What? No! No, no, no mistake," he babbled, because suddenly the thought of Peggy never kissing him like that again was the worst possibility in the world, worse than never rooting out all of the remaining Leviathan sects, worse than losing—well, okay, maybe not worse than losing the war, but it was up there. "That was..." He tried to come up with something suave and sophisticated, or at least grammatically correct, but he was too distracted by the way her lipstick had smudged around her mouth, and by the giddy thought that he'd been the one to make it that way. The unflappable Peggy Carter, finally flapped. By kissing him.

"I could do that again, even." He could do it a _lot_.

Her smile started as relieved, and went straight to mischievous. "Oh, good. I had rather hoped it wouldn't be a one-time occurrence."

He almost took her up on that suggestion right then and there, but he had to know first. "What made you...I mean, why..." His brow furrowed. "Now?"

She smirked, and he initially thought it was merely in amusement at his tongue-tied attempt to speak, but then he recognized the fondness lurking underneath. "You gave me such a good opening."

"Always looking for best tactical position?" She shrugged in acknowledgement. He expected nothing less, really. "Less than an hour ago you were punching me in the face, and now..." He almost laughed. "Are all British dames this confusing, or is that one of your specialties?"

"I think you'll find I have many specialities, Jack." She leaned forward to kiss him again, and he soon realized exactly how right she was.


End file.
